2011 Brazilian GP first practice

Mark Webber headed the first practice session for the Brazilian Grand Prix.

The Red Bull pilot was just 14 thousandths of a second quicker than Jenson Button.

The McLaren and Red Bull cars swapped fastest times during the session. Lewis Hamilton was third quickest ahead of Sebastian Vettel, the world champion wearing a new helmet-mounted camera during the session.

The two Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso were next. Alonso’s session came to an end when his engine failed five minutes before the chequered flag came out.

Romain Grosjean, driving Vitaly Petrov’s car, also came to a stop before the end of the session with a technical problem on the Renault.

Several other teams ran one-off drivers during the session. Nico Hulkenberg was eighth-quickest for Force India behind Michael Schumacher.

Jean-Eric Vergne was 18th for Toro Rosso, Luiz Razia 20th for Lotus and Jan Charouz last in the HRT.

Kamui Kobayashi had a minor spin during the session but didn’t hit anything and ended up 15th-fastest.

Sadly, this is all I’ll have to go on for predictions. Gonna be off visiting relatives for the holiday in the states :/. Go figure that one of the few times they’re close to my time zone is the one time I need them to be finishing FP2 at like 8 am my time instead.

He has looked very fast. He never really got the chance or the car to impress on his F1 debut and since then he has improved beyond recognition as a race driver. I think he is very talented and may perform to a Kubica level.

(And before you tell me that practice doesn’t mean anything, a young drivers test using different tyres, possibly different parts, and with a significantly warmer daytime track didn’t mean anything either).

@mike-e Was going to say just this. Given that there’s less than a tenth of a second between H├╝lkenberg and Di Resta, I’d say there’s not much in it between them. If the gap were three-tenths, however, it would be a different story.